In My Kitchen: June 2021

May was a turbulent month for me. I went to Broome for a wonderful week's holiday with two friends from Melbourne - and how timely that was, now that they are in lockdown again! I wrote a piece for the Sydney Morning Herald which summarises my inner turmoil about Fortress Australia. It was an incredibly complex feeling to read your own words in black and white - I am so proud to be Australian, but I feel so trapped right now. 

Let's take a look in the kitchen.. 

On the garden front...

While I was in Broome, the chillies went crazy! I ended up making a big jar of chilli jam that should last me through the winter.

Radish is a surprisingly excellent grower! They seem to grow all year round and are still strong in the garden. The lettuce has self-germinated from last year's growing and are just starting now. 

I delayed all the planting this year knowing I would be away for two weeks. It's a bit late but everything is coming along now. I love this picture of the emerging snow pea bud, gently pushing the soil out of the way.   

On the baking front...

I went to a tart class! It was so much fun, my favourite part by far was decorating them. The large tarts are passionfruit curd with lemon meringue; and coffee chocolate ganache with coffee chantilly cream. The little tarts were made with the leftover fillings, and the pink ones are filled with raspberry and topped with white chocolate cremeux! I was super grateful to share them with a few different friends and my dad's neighbours. It's amazing to see people's faces light up when you present them with baked goods! 

I made this apple and almond cake for the medical team one morning when I was feeling particularly restless. I didn't want to make the cake or eat the cake, I just wanted to decorate something with my hands! It's a simple but beautiful tea cake with caramelised apple on top, based on the recipe from Butter and Brioche.

This wool bread stuffed with cranberries was on my mental "to bake" list for a while. I changed the recipe to sourdough of course. It was beautiful, fluffy and soft - but didn't quite rise enough to meet in the middle to get the wool effect. Next time I will try it in a smaller baking dish!

Onto the Food and Music series...

I baked these cutesy dinner rolls for an impromptu soup dinner with my piano duet friend. The plain sponge cake was also just for funs, since the oven was going anyway. Her friend was staying over and had just turned 80, so we turned it into a birthday cake with some cream. We accompanied this with 2 Mozart violin sonatas (No. 2 and No. 7) and the Bruch Romanze in F which I am currently obsessed with. It is scored for both violin and viola, and the effect is remarkably different. 

Our string quartet celebrated the cellist's birthday. Everyone in the quartet adores the flourless orange cake where you boil 2 oranges whole and blitz the lot peel and all, ending up with the richest orange flavour. I divided the batter to get 2 layers and made a dark chocolate ganache. I had planned to set the orange cooking water into a bittersweet jelly, but there was no gelatine, so we made do with Aeroplane jelly! Musically we celebrated with the Dvorak Piano Quintet and Elena Katz Chernin's The Offering, a really cool modern piano quintet. 

Pengy came back from his holidays in Wollongong to join our quartet for roast lamb with all the trimmings, and my favourite was the brussel sprouts with bacon! We ate this with a few snippets of the Razumovsky quartets - the 2nd movement of the third Razumovsky is my current favourite, and the Mendelssohn Op. 12 string quartet.

Finally, the curveball this month...

My mousepad finally retired after 12 years of service. In 2009, I was a junior resident in ICU. The Gillard government had given a huge funding boost to Donatelife (the organ donation agency in Australia) and they had set up offices in my hospital. The nurses were so kind and lovely, and I learned so much from them. When I left the term, they gave me a mousepad which I took with me everywhere - it later lived with me in Canada and in Darwin. Recently, I mentioned this antique relic to one of the donation nurses I currently work with and she was gobsmacked it had lasted this long! I now have the current version of the mousepad. Seeing the logo change was an incredible reminder of how far we have come in organ donation awareness, both in the medical and general community in the last 12 years! It is a real privilege to be caring for people at the end of life, and I hope I never forget this till the day I die. 

I'm sending this to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings who hosts the monthly In My Kitchen series - Thanks Sherry for this opportunity to look through our food diaries!